Common Moral Sayings

#1. The common moral framework: Do anything as long as it does no harm to others. Problem: Whose definition of harm?

Timothy Keller

#2. Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge.

J. Budziszewski

#3. The common moral praxis of Jews and Christians is most definitely theologically informed by the doctrine we share in common: The human person, male and female, is created in the image of God.

David Novak

#4. We need to develop respect for our history, despite all of its flaws, and love for the Fatherland. We need to pay the utmost attention to our common moral values and consolidate Russian society on this basis. I think that this is an absolute priority.

Vladimir Putin

#5. Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage.

Ludwig Von Mises

#6. Since position and contact play so big a part in determining what can be seen, heard, read, and experienced, as well as what it is permissible to see, hear, read, and know, it is no wonder that moral judgment is so much more common than constructive thought.

Walter Lippmann

#7. McDowell has pointed to three common reasons people reject Christianity: pride, moral problems with how Christ would impact their lifestyles, and ignorance.

Alex Mcfarland

#8. The most common reason that I turn down a film project is because of my schedule. If I can't devote the time to a score that it deserves, I'll pass. I'll also turn down a film if its moral position is different than what my own understanding of right and wrong.

John Keltonic

#9. As believers we all have an opportunity and moral obligation to recognize our spiritual common ground; to rise above our differences; to combat prejudice and intolerance.

Queen Noor Of Jordan

#10. When any significant change takes place in the moral standards of a community, it is immediately reflected in a general shifting of the meanings of common words.

Owen Barfield

#11. It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Mark Twain

#12. It is a tragedy that we live in a world where physical courage is so common, and moral courage is so rare.

Claude Monet

#13. A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature.

Steven Pinker

#14. People have too often valued "proper" religious beliefs more than proper moral behavior, and even slaughtered others for not having the right religious beliefs. This is a common occurrence even in our time.

Dennis Prager

#15. I think all villains have something in common: they have something that they need or want very, very badly. The stakes are very high and they are not bound by moral codes or being ethical, so they can do anything and will do anything to get what they want.

Donna Murphy

#16. In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many. ... Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable in human affairs.

Emilio G. Segre

#17. Foremost, step one could take is avoiding the cheap behaviour of compromising principles with decorated lies which assails the moral power of common sense.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

#18. Netiquette: The social code of network communication. Internet code of conduct based on the Golden Rule. Ethical philosophy of common rules.

David Chiles

#19. Abstemiousness in diet and control of the passions, will preserve the intellect and give mental and moral vigor, enabling men to bring all their propensities under the control of the higher powers, and to discern between right and wrong, the sacred and the common.

Ellen G. White

#20. It aligns the cannibals with their real modern counterparts: those who eat "health" diets for self-improvement or worldly success or moral superiority or enhanced beauty or personal purity. Strangely, cannibals turn out to have a lot in common with vegans.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

#21. The story of the decadence of the cathedral as a moral power, a spiritual energizer in civilization, is the sad but inevitable story of dogmatism. It is the story of the struggle of free thought with bigotry, religion making common cause with the wrong side.

Jenkin Lloyd Jones

#22. It is a common thing for men to benumb their own arms, and make them as dead and useless by leaning too much upon them: so it is in a moral as well as a natural way: all the prudence and pains in the world avail nothing without God. So saith the Psalmist, in Psalm cxxvii. 2.

John Flavel

#23. If people use common sense and their own guiding moral compass, I think they'll generally stay out of trouble.

Steve Chabot

#24. In the common degree of the moral, there is no virtue. Virtue is excellence.

Adam Smith

#25. The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

Thomas Hobbes

#26. I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.

Michel De Montaigne

#27. I was moving among two groups ... who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral, and psychological climate had so little in common that ... one might have crossed the ocean.

C.P. Snow

#28. Greed is rightly considered a "deadly sin" because it erodes the moral values that encourage us to care for the common good. Greed violates the spirit of connectedness and community that is natural to human survival [...] replacing this awareness with harmful self-centeredness.

Bell Hooks

#29. When you educate a girl, you kick-start a cycle of success. It makes economic sense. It makes social sense. It makes moral sense. But, it seems, it's not common sense yet.

Queen Rania Of Jordan

#30. It is probably a pity that every citizen of each state cannot visit all the others, to see the differences, to learn what we have in common, and come back with a richer, fuller understanding of America - in all its beauty, in all its dignity, in all its strength, in support of moral principles.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#31. If religion and science could be united on the common ground of biological conservation, the problem would be soon solved. If there is any moral precept shared by people of all beliefs, it is that we owe ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment.

E. O. Wilson

#32. I grew up in the Midwest, so I have sort of an honorable moral code. But I moved to a city and joined a sort of fast crowd. A lot of people who grew up in the city sort of aren't aware of manners and other ways of life and 'common decency.'

Derek Blasberg

#33. There was, I think, a prevailing
impression common to the provincial mind, that his misfortune was
the result of the defective moral quality of his being a stranger.

Bret Harte

#34. A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

George Bernard Shaw

#35. Rather than dividing the world between good and evil, the Left divided the world in terms of economics. Economic classes, not moral values, explained human behavior. Therefore, to cite a common example, poverty, not one's moral value system, or lack of it, caused crime.

Dennis Prager

#36. No light privilege is it to have a hand in building up the moral life of these new communities; no common honour surely to help to lay side by side with the foundations of their free political institutions the broad and deep foundations of the Church of God.

Henry Parry Liddon

#37. I was entering into a moral universe in which I would be related to every other rational being, and in which whole masses of us, as thick as swarming bees, would drag one another along towards some common end of good or evil, peace or war.

Thomas Merton

#38. Every society rests in the last resort on the recognition of common principles and common ideals, and if it makes no moral or spiritual appeal to the loyalty of its members, it must inevitably fall to pieces.

Christopher Henry Dawson

#39. God gives out good gifts of wisdom, talent, beauty, and skill 'graciously'
that is, in a completely unmerited way. He casts them across all humanity, regardless of religious conviction, race, gender, or any other attribute to enrich, brighten, and preserve the world.

Timothy Keller

#40. Futurists and common sense concur that a substantial change, worldwide, in life-style and moral guidelines will soon become an absolute necessity.

Roger Wolcott Sperry

#41. That part of the judicial law which
was typical of Christ's government
has ceased, but that part which is of
common and general equity remains
still in force. It is a common maxim:
those judgments which are common
and natural are moral and perpetual.

Samuel Bolton

#42. When a heroine is satisfied that she has exercised judgement with clear vision, moral principle,and common sense, she need not acquiesce to opposing viewpoints.

Jane Austen

#43. I personally think that what the big (writers) have in common is a fierce moral sensibility, which is unquenchable and they are all burning with the same anger at the way the world is.
The little ones have made a peace with it, and the bigger ones can't make any peace.

Arthur Miller

#44. Every art, and every science reduced to a teachable form, and in like manner every action and moral choice, aims, it is thought, at some good: for which reason a common and by no means a bad description of the Chief Good is, that which all things aim at.

Aristotle.

#45. While the easiest way in metaphysics is to condemn all metaphysics as nonsense, the easiest way in morals is to elevate the common practice of the community into a moral absolute.

Daniel J. Boorstin

#46. When one gets reports from scientists, engineers and technicians whose credibility by all common standards is high and whose moral caliber seems to preclude a hoax, one can do no less than hear them out, in all seriousness.

J. Allen Hynek

#47. Like so many of his successors in the language-crank world today, though, (Jonathan) Swift not only loathes (the) banal and common change (language); he ascribes it to moral failing.

Robert Lane Greene

#48. The downfall of every civilization comes, not from the moral corruption of the common man, but rather from the moral complacency of common men in high places.

E. Digby Baltzell

#49. The elegance is as physical, as moral quality that has nothing common with the clothing. You can see a countrywoman more elegant than one so called elegant woman.

Karl Lagerfeld

#50. People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology. Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our nation stemming from a common worldview.

Mitt Romney

#51. There is no comfortable middle path where we get to provide a rational justification for our basic moral, religious and common sense beliefs.

Frederick C. Beiser

#52. Christianity and Judaism are united above all in their common affirmation and implementation of the moral teaching of the Hebrew Bible, or 'Old Testament,' and the traditions of interpretation of that teaching.

David Novak

#53. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'

Pope Benedict XVI

#54. One can regard the moral law as an illusion, and so cut himself off from the common ground of humanity.

C.S. Lewis